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Workers Rights Boards to Make Sure No Worker Stands Alone
Case Study —
In Boston, 13 community leaders including a clergyman, a retired university professor and prominent Hispanic — all members of the area’s Workers’ Rights Board — staged a sit-in at the office of Richmark curtain factory President John Levanchy. After their arrests, they threatened to stage a show trial on sweatshop conditions inside the plant. The very next day, the company agreed to bring back 10 employees who had been illegally fired and 50 other workers who were on strike with full back pay, to recognize the union through a cardcheck method and negotiate with Union of Needle-trades, Industrial and Textile Employees. Three months later, the workers had a first contract which included a 33 percent pay increase.
Case Study —
In Elyria, Ohio, the Workers’ Rights Board got involved after the school system voted to contract out the jobs of 40 bus drivers, and the new private company refused to recognize their union. Prominent civic, religious and other community leaders on the WRB held a public hearing, allowing the drivers the chance to tell their horror stories in public. At its next meeting, the school board went into executive session and when they came out, they announced that the board would force the new private company to honor its commitment to allow the drivers to join the Steelworkers.
Case Study —
In Buffalo, N.Y., Merchants Insurance Group Inc. dumped its Service Employees workforce and planned to contract out janitorial work to a nonunion company. The six janitors who worked at Merchant’s headquarters at 250 Main St. had among them almost 75 years with Merchants. The Workers’ Rights Board was called in. Nineteen clergy, elected officials, academics and union activists including Debora Hayes, president of Nurses United/CWA Local 1168, sent management a letter calling the action immoral. They got the attention of the Buffalo News. They held rallies. Sixteen days later, management called the WRB and asked, "What will it take to make you go away?" The answer was simple: Bring back the union workers. Management did.
Labor laws in the United States are often weak and ineffectual — and even when there’s a strong union presence to fight an issue through grievance and arbitration procedures, management appeals can take years before an issue is resolved.
"For nonunion workers, it’s much, much worse," says CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who spearheads CWA’s organizing efforts.
"As a matter of fact, a man or woman without union representation and a collective bargaining agreement is often left twisting in the wind, with no support and no lifeline," Cohen says.
Created as an adjunct of Jobs with Justice to combat the ravages of the Reagan-Bush era on the labor movement and the nation’s battered and bruised labor laws, Workers’ Rights Boards have been offering hope and help since the mid-1990s, in a dozen communities.
Under Presidents Reagan and Bush, employers learned they could run rampant over workers, and they hired expensive, union-busting lawyers to show them how. Occupational safety and health enforcement suffered, cases got backlogged at the National Labor Relations Board, and "permanent replacements" became a term often heard.
The WRB strategy was developed after a CWA-led "day of action" at NLRB offices across the country in June 1993. More than 7,000 people participated, including 400 who were arrested during sit-ins over the agency’s failure to enforce labor laws.
WRBs Step In
The composition of Workers’ Rights Boards varies from city to city but most often includes local labor, religious, political and community leaders who are willing to work together to try to right wrongs, explains Fred Azcarate, executive director of the national Jobs with Justice coalition. In some areas, even members of congress, retired judges, and activists from the academic world have joined in.
As many as 100,000 pamphlets have been distributed in these dozen communities to get out the word that WRBs exist and are there to lend a hand and provide help.
These community-based organizations — featuring prominent and respected citizens — first investigate a complaint to make sure it’s legitimate. Most complaints, says Azcarate, involve unfair treatment, discrimination or suppression of basic rights.
Commonly, the next step is to try to bring about a solution through moral persuasion. If and when that doesn’t work, WRB members turn up the heat — going public, holding rallies, distributing leaflets, contacting the media or even conducting public hearings to let the parties air their dispute.
"The tactic obviously depends on the situation. We have had great success," Azcarate says.
Kevin Mulligan, a former president of CWA Local 7777, Denver, and now the organizing coordinator for District 7, recalls that when he and Bruce Meacham of the Newspaper Guild were co-chairs of the Greater Denver area Jobs with Justice, they decided to form a Workers’ Rights Board.
"We were able to get Congresswoman Pat Shroeder, the mayor of Denver, the city auditor and even a Catholic bishop to serve with us," Mulligan recalls — saying that these community leaders were able to give the WRB the clout needed to have a real impact.
Mulligan says, too, that in the formative years they studied established WRBs in Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y. — two of the first WRBs — for inspiration and ideas.
CWA’s John Ryan, former president of Local 4309 and now executive secretary of the Cleveland Central Labor Council, is a founder of Jobs With Justice in the Cleveland area — and an enthusiastic supporter of WRBs.
Another early WRB supporter is Hayes, president of CWA Local 1168, in Buffalo, and a former winner of the President’s Annual Award, CWA’s top prize for organizing.
Both say that WRBs stand ready to step in and lend support to unrepresented individuals or groups of workers whose rights and dignity are being trampled by an overzealous or meanspirited employer.
The remedy can be as complex as guiding workers through a full-fledged organizing campaign and negotiating a contract or as simple as writing a letter.
One Brings Thousands
Mulligan, for example, remembers a time when a single letter produced thousands of dollars in overtime pay that had been denied to workers in a nonunion bakery. "I even forget whether it was Bruce (Meacham) or I who signed the letter but I do remember we were acting on an employee complaint, and we got a fast and satisfactory response," Mulligan says.
Today, in Denver, Mulligan and Kevin Hilton, one of two full-time organizers on the staff of Local 7777, are working with other WRB supporters to bring justice to several hundred cafeteria workers for the Denver school system who are being denied union representation — although 96 percent have signed union authorization cards. Members of the school board are denying them the right to vote.
WRB tactics in Denver have included serving members of the Denver board of education with a "summons" to attend a Feb. 15 public hearing on the issue — and to explain why they are denying these workers a basic right. At the mid-February hearing, three food service workers testified but the school board didn’t show up. WRB leaders who attended the hearing and heard the testimony are now determining their next step to bring justice to these workers.
Mulligan points out that 400 custodians — all full-time — already have CWA representation, and have had it for 20 years. But, Mulligan and Hilton say, 160 part-time custodians are agitating for union representation too.
From Defeat to Victory
In late 1996 CWA Local 4340, Cleveland, ran a hard but positive campaign to win representation rights for a small group of workers at Ameritech’s Security Link, a nationwide security alarm company. When the votes were counted, however, the effort fell short, said Local President Ed Phillips and Jim Cosgrove, the local organizer — despite the fact that 13 of 19 workers had originally signed petitions supporting CWA.
The local, encouraged by workers at Security Link, decided to try again — and this time, turned to the Cleveland area WRB.
Seth Rosen, administrative assistant to Vice President Jeffrey Rechenbach of District 4 and director of the WRB, and Steve Cagan, the JwJ-WRB coordinator in the Cleveland area, first set up a major rally, timed to coincide with a CWA district meeting. That produced 300 demonstrators — a large turnout for a 20-worker unit. The Security Link workers were impressed.
"That was part of our purpose," Cagan says. "We view WRBs as a way to help workers maintain morale and to remind them they are not making strange, isolated decisions. And, that they’re not alone."
Next, the WRB staged a rally outside the Cleveland City Club — one of the city’s premiere venues for visiting executives — when Ameritech CEO and Chairman Dick Notebaert was the guest speaker. Inside, the WRB had "plants" who asked Notebaert sharp questions.
By the time the next election rolled around in April of 1998, the workers voted overwhelmingly for CWA representation, and last fall — after a tough round of bargaining — they won their first union contract.
The success in Cleveland spawned yet another victory — a larger unit of Ameritech Security Link workers in Milwaukee, Wis. voted for CWA representation last July 15.
Success Stories Abound
In 1997 — the last year for which statistics are available — WRBs were involved in organizing campaigns covering 1,900 workers and 13 unions, including CWA, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees, the Auto Workers-Machinists and Steelworkers, the Electrical Workers, the Restaurant Workers, the Musicians, Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers.
WRBs held seven hearings on welfare/workfair injustices and privatization threats, conducted a referendum on representation for 30,000 workfare workers in New York City, and helped hundreds of individual workers and groups of workers resolve unfair workplace practices.
All together, more than 400 religious leaders, community leaders, elected officials and academics got involved to support and work with WRBs.
In Buffalo, the Workers’ Rights Board of Western New York used direct intervention with an employer, regular meetings and rallies to support 100 laundry workers in their victorious effort to win union representation by the Teamsters;
In Chicago, the Workers’ Rights Board ran an election for armored guards whose work was considered extremely dangerous but who were being denied representation and who are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. When management at United Armored Services refused to participate in a WRB-monitored election, the WRB offered to hold the election without company participation. The workers voted 136-9 in the unofficial balloting for SEIU representation and WRB leaders are still pressing their case for these workers;
In Milwaukee, a Workers’ Rights Board hearing on the city’s privatization proposal brought 500 community and union members out to a public hearing to voice their concerns. The WRB’s fast action and the overwhelming community support got the attention of city officials, who immediately reversed themselves on the worst elements of the proposal;
In Cleveland, probation officers for the Cuyahoga County court system didn’t just lose their union — they lost their legal right to join a union. Using a loophole in the law, for a decade, the workers were denied an effective voice. Calling the AFL-CIO for help, they were referred to the Workers’ Rights Board which eventually teamed them up with CWA. While these workers may not have had a legal right to a vote, they had a moral right, the union declared.
The executive director of the Democratic Party agreed to monitor a vote among the probation officers — a good choice in a county dominated by Democrats. Even after 90 percent of the workers voted "Union Yes," court officials still needed to be prodded, but the effort produced a union contract containing recognition, a grievance procedure and a wage increase of 10 percent.
In Boston, 13 community leaders including a clergyman, a retired university professor and prominent Hispanic — all members of the area’s Workers’ Rights Board — staged a sit-in at the office of Richmark curtain factory President John Levanchy. After their arrests, they threatened to stage a show trial on sweatshop conditions inside the plant. The very next day, the company agreed to bring back 10 employees who had been illegally fired and 50 other workers who were on strike with full back pay, to recognize the union through a cardcheck method and negotiate with Union of Needle-trades, Industrial and Textile Employees. Three months later, the workers had a first contract which included a 33 percent pay increase.
Case Study —
In Elyria, Ohio, the Workers’ Rights Board got involved after the school system voted to contract out the jobs of 40 bus drivers, and the new private company refused to recognize their union. Prominent civic, religious and other community leaders on the WRB held a public hearing, allowing the drivers the chance to tell their horror stories in public. At its next meeting, the school board went into executive session and when they came out, they announced that the board would force the new private company to honor its commitment to allow the drivers to join the Steelworkers.
Case Study —
In Buffalo, N.Y., Merchants Insurance Group Inc. dumped its Service Employees workforce and planned to contract out janitorial work to a nonunion company. The six janitors who worked at Merchant’s headquarters at 250 Main St. had among them almost 75 years with Merchants. The Workers’ Rights Board was called in. Nineteen clergy, elected officials, academics and union activists including Debora Hayes, president of Nurses United/CWA Local 1168, sent management a letter calling the action immoral. They got the attention of the Buffalo News. They held rallies. Sixteen days later, management called the WRB and asked, "What will it take to make you go away?" The answer was simple: Bring back the union workers. Management did.
Labor laws in the United States are often weak and ineffectual — and even when there’s a strong union presence to fight an issue through grievance and arbitration procedures, management appeals can take years before an issue is resolved.
"For nonunion workers, it’s much, much worse," says CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who spearheads CWA’s organizing efforts.
"As a matter of fact, a man or woman without union representation and a collective bargaining agreement is often left twisting in the wind, with no support and no lifeline," Cohen says.
Created as an adjunct of Jobs with Justice to combat the ravages of the Reagan-Bush era on the labor movement and the nation’s battered and bruised labor laws, Workers’ Rights Boards have been offering hope and help since the mid-1990s, in a dozen communities.
Under Presidents Reagan and Bush, employers learned they could run rampant over workers, and they hired expensive, union-busting lawyers to show them how. Occupational safety and health enforcement suffered, cases got backlogged at the National Labor Relations Board, and "permanent replacements" became a term often heard.
The WRB strategy was developed after a CWA-led "day of action" at NLRB offices across the country in June 1993. More than 7,000 people participated, including 400 who were arrested during sit-ins over the agency’s failure to enforce labor laws.
WRBs Step In
The composition of Workers’ Rights Boards varies from city to city but most often includes local labor, religious, political and community leaders who are willing to work together to try to right wrongs, explains Fred Azcarate, executive director of the national Jobs with Justice coalition. In some areas, even members of congress, retired judges, and activists from the academic world have joined in.
As many as 100,000 pamphlets have been distributed in these dozen communities to get out the word that WRBs exist and are there to lend a hand and provide help.
These community-based organizations — featuring prominent and respected citizens — first investigate a complaint to make sure it’s legitimate. Most complaints, says Azcarate, involve unfair treatment, discrimination or suppression of basic rights.
Commonly, the next step is to try to bring about a solution through moral persuasion. If and when that doesn’t work, WRB members turn up the heat — going public, holding rallies, distributing leaflets, contacting the media or even conducting public hearings to let the parties air their dispute.
"The tactic obviously depends on the situation. We have had great success," Azcarate says.
Kevin Mulligan, a former president of CWA Local 7777, Denver, and now the organizing coordinator for District 7, recalls that when he and Bruce Meacham of the Newspaper Guild were co-chairs of the Greater Denver area Jobs with Justice, they decided to form a Workers’ Rights Board.
"We were able to get Congresswoman Pat Shroeder, the mayor of Denver, the city auditor and even a Catholic bishop to serve with us," Mulligan recalls — saying that these community leaders were able to give the WRB the clout needed to have a real impact.
Mulligan says, too, that in the formative years they studied established WRBs in Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y. — two of the first WRBs — for inspiration and ideas.
CWA’s John Ryan, former president of Local 4309 and now executive secretary of the Cleveland Central Labor Council, is a founder of Jobs With Justice in the Cleveland area — and an enthusiastic supporter of WRBs.
Another early WRB supporter is Hayes, president of CWA Local 1168, in Buffalo, and a former winner of the President’s Annual Award, CWA’s top prize for organizing.
Both say that WRBs stand ready to step in and lend support to unrepresented individuals or groups of workers whose rights and dignity are being trampled by an overzealous or meanspirited employer.
The remedy can be as complex as guiding workers through a full-fledged organizing campaign and negotiating a contract or as simple as writing a letter.
One Brings Thousands
Mulligan, for example, remembers a time when a single letter produced thousands of dollars in overtime pay that had been denied to workers in a nonunion bakery. "I even forget whether it was Bruce (Meacham) or I who signed the letter but I do remember we were acting on an employee complaint, and we got a fast and satisfactory response," Mulligan says.
Today, in Denver, Mulligan and Kevin Hilton, one of two full-time organizers on the staff of Local 7777, are working with other WRB supporters to bring justice to several hundred cafeteria workers for the Denver school system who are being denied union representation — although 96 percent have signed union authorization cards. Members of the school board are denying them the right to vote.
WRB tactics in Denver have included serving members of the Denver board of education with a "summons" to attend a Feb. 15 public hearing on the issue — and to explain why they are denying these workers a basic right. At the mid-February hearing, three food service workers testified but the school board didn’t show up. WRB leaders who attended the hearing and heard the testimony are now determining their next step to bring justice to these workers.
Mulligan points out that 400 custodians — all full-time — already have CWA representation, and have had it for 20 years. But, Mulligan and Hilton say, 160 part-time custodians are agitating for union representation too.
From Defeat to Victory
In late 1996 CWA Local 4340, Cleveland, ran a hard but positive campaign to win representation rights for a small group of workers at Ameritech’s Security Link, a nationwide security alarm company. When the votes were counted, however, the effort fell short, said Local President Ed Phillips and Jim Cosgrove, the local organizer — despite the fact that 13 of 19 workers had originally signed petitions supporting CWA.
The local, encouraged by workers at Security Link, decided to try again — and this time, turned to the Cleveland area WRB.
Seth Rosen, administrative assistant to Vice President Jeffrey Rechenbach of District 4 and director of the WRB, and Steve Cagan, the JwJ-WRB coordinator in the Cleveland area, first set up a major rally, timed to coincide with a CWA district meeting. That produced 300 demonstrators — a large turnout for a 20-worker unit. The Security Link workers were impressed.
"That was part of our purpose," Cagan says. "We view WRBs as a way to help workers maintain morale and to remind them they are not making strange, isolated decisions. And, that they’re not alone."
Next, the WRB staged a rally outside the Cleveland City Club — one of the city’s premiere venues for visiting executives — when Ameritech CEO and Chairman Dick Notebaert was the guest speaker. Inside, the WRB had "plants" who asked Notebaert sharp questions.
By the time the next election rolled around in April of 1998, the workers voted overwhelmingly for CWA representation, and last fall — after a tough round of bargaining — they won their first union contract.
The success in Cleveland spawned yet another victory — a larger unit of Ameritech Security Link workers in Milwaukee, Wis. voted for CWA representation last July 15.
Success Stories Abound
In 1997 — the last year for which statistics are available — WRBs were involved in organizing campaigns covering 1,900 workers and 13 unions, including CWA, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees, the Auto Workers-Machinists and Steelworkers, the Electrical Workers, the Restaurant Workers, the Musicians, Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers.
WRBs held seven hearings on welfare/workfair injustices and privatization threats, conducted a referendum on representation for 30,000 workfare workers in New York City, and helped hundreds of individual workers and groups of workers resolve unfair workplace practices.
All together, more than 400 religious leaders, community leaders, elected officials and academics got involved to support and work with WRBs.
The executive director of the Democratic Party agreed to monitor a vote among the probation officers — a good choice in a county dominated by Democrats. Even after 90 percent of the workers voted "Union Yes," court officials still needed to be prodded, but the effort produced a union contract containing recognition, a grievance procedure and a wage increase of 10 percent.